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lyrics

Lithium or lengthy C.B.T.?
I’ll keep taking the pills if you keep giving them to me,
And I don’t want to prove you have a heart,
Behind that cold exterior cause I’d have no idea where to start.
It’s a long way down to the bottom; it’s a steep climb up to the top,
It’s a gamble when you don’t know how to stop,

I keep running from the storm and you have done you’re best,
To regulate and medicate the dark clouds forming in my brain,
But Mildred drop the act with me,
Oh when we get together we can talk it out and then you’ll see,
We all need shelter in the rain,

It’s nausea and numbness; it’s stiffness and fatigue,
I’ll keep taking the pills, why won’t you take a few with me?
When I look into your eyes, that icy glare belies a softer side,
But you’re held captive too, we were both lobotomized,
It’s a long way down to the bottom; it’s a steep climb up to the top,
It’s a gamble when you don’t know how to stop,

We all feel crazy sometimes

It’s a long way down to the bottom,
It’s a tough climb up to the top,
It’s a gamble when you don’t know how to stop,
We all feel crazy sometimes,
And you’re the same as me,
Yeah you’re the same as me,
You know that I keep running from the storm,
And you have done you’re best,
To regulate and medicate,
The dark clouds forming in my brain,
But Mildred drop the act with me,
Oh when we get together I can make us both a pot of tea,
Then we can talk it out and see,
It’s not as simple as it seems,
Sometimes it helps to feel the rain.

***

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (1975). Directed by Milos Forman. USA: Fantasy Films.
Louise Fletcher (Mildred Ratched), Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar, 1976.

“What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it.”
¬ -Randle Patrick McMurphy

Mildred Ratched has to be one of the most formidable villains ever put to celluloid. When watching One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest you can find yourself becoming physically tense and palpably furious at the screen. It’s a hugely compelling story, and on the whole, resists black-and-white morality, but it’s hard to see Mildred as anything other than a two-dimensional foe. There are tiny hints at an underlying humanity, but these are buried beneath a performance so powerfully loathsome that Louise Fletcher beat fellow nominee and two-time previous winner Glenda Jackson to the Best Actress Oscar in 1975. It’s such an astonishing performance that it’s easy to forget that a compassionate and caring human being exists beneath it. Watching Fletcher’s tearful acceptance speech having seen the film is a jarring experience. It’s like you’ve trained your body to hate someone evil, and are then faced with that same person effortlessly exuding magnanimity, humanity and dignity. She begins: “well, it looks like you all hated me so much, that you’ve given me this award for it”. It’s a powerful movie in terms of what it says about mental health, and on a personal level, I found writing a song addressed to Mildred was a useful way to examine my own mental health problems, with an all-needed degree of removal. As we say in the song, Mildred was lobotomized. Her author(s) removed her compassion and her humanity, and left a callous robotic shell behind. In gender terms, Mildred subverts traditional expectations. She is not mothering, she is not caring, she is not nurturing. She is cold and hyper-rational. She is as ‘crazy’ as anyone else in that mental institution. But she is a work of fiction, and it’s important to remember that.

credits

from Mildred, Margie, Annie, Clarice, released April 1, 2012

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Onsind Durham

Onsind is a punk band from Pity Me, Durham (UK).

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